


Scars of Red

by haku23



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 16:46:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haku23/pseuds/haku23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha is no one's ballerina-not any more-but sometimes she still dances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars of Red

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by a prompt on Avenger Kink in terms of making me think of her hobbies however I didn't feel like this was a good fit for the prompt at all so I posted it here instead. Her back story is...confusing at best so I drew from what I knew after reading Marjorie Liu's Name of the Rose(which is one of my favourite comics ever). Though it's unlikely I'll ever write anything that stars Natasha again because she's a difficult character to get a handle of I just had to get the idea out of my head. : )

She's no one's ballerina. The memories that had seemed so real-real enough to seem like her life-had been nothing but fabrications by the Red Room to keep her sane. To keep her theirs. So she's no one's ballerina, no one's pretty doll, no one's weapon any longer but her own.

 

The pointe shoes are well worn under her fingers; the satin exterior smooth and hiding the unyielding sole of them, the blood and sweat and calluses that had seeped into the fabric of them because for all that the memories aren't real she still dances. Not when anyone is around. Not for anyone but herself. She supposes that James must know just as she knows how his arm aches with phantom pain-the memory of a limb that no longer exists. They don't speak about either because there isn't anything to come of speaking of it. The time for healing old wounds has passed because by now they've scabbed over and healed into a scar that is every bit as obvious to themselves as it is hidden to everyone else.

 

It's been a long time since she's been on pointe and it will hurt to throw herself back to it but she stretches, warms up, and winds the ribbon around her ankle anyway. It aches like frozen landscapes, like dead husbands and stillborn children. Like a life spent clawing her way out of the restraints put on her, like first love and second love, and all the other loves after. But she's free. She's in control even as she turns wildly, leaps with abandon, and stretches her body past what most people would consider possible.

 

By the end of the exercise she's drenched and her legs are protesting the position she's kept them in for so long. She sits, unwinds the ribbon from around her ankle, and stretches again before tucking the shoes back into the brown box she'd brought them to the studio in. A child wearing her pink leotard and tutu is sitting with her mother outside the room, swinging her legs that are too short to reach the floor from her seat as they wait for the lesson that always comes after Natasha's reserved block of time. She grins and Natasha smiles back when she passes them-the girl's two front teeth are missing and her mother looks harried.

 

“Are you a ballerina?” she asks and Natasha shakes her head.

 

“No, not anymore.”  

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
